Thursday, December 22, 2011

today I've read some news on twitter about the voxel painting development in 3D Coat. It is already possible to paint on meshes that are existing in the voxel room, but the models have to be converted into the surface mode first.
You can paint on a mesh, just by switching to the paint room and use the regular painting tools. It seems, the color information will be stored in the vertexes of a model and no uv coordinates are required before. (This info is my current presumtion and not approved...)

Andrew is now expanding the paint functionality. He will port the described surface painting possibilities to regular voxel objects soon.

"In this festive season, we are happy to offer you our special Christmas discount! From December 17 until December 31, 2011 we are offering $100 off on 3D-Coat Professional, therefore lowering the standard price to $249."

Friday, December 16, 2011

Free form primitives and pose tools has got multi-selection and a gizmo (if multiple elements are selected) - http://bit.ly/tihLm7

All retopo tools will support realtime symmetry now. F.e.: If you
change something on one side of an existing symmetry, then it will be changed on
other side too. Turn off "Retopo->Show mirrored" to see clear what happens.It is very important, if you want to update existing a mesh
without breaking its UV set.

Primitives updating done to produce really good quality in surface mode booleans. Grid density may be varied by slider now.

Andrew has found one a lag in the retopo area (and UI in general). Now all will work faster, especially when using undo/redo and tool switching.

Andrew has found the reason why importing model for ppp takes long time in some cases.
It was the realtime padding preparing routine. It is optimized a lot now.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Updated to 3.5.27 (Win version first, other versions will come a bit later):

Andrew has made a lot of work for improving the stability and quality in LiveClay. Usual
surface tools will be also well compatible with LC. There is checkbox
"Remove stretching" in usual surface tools to remove stretching after
the end of stroke.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Hello friends,
the interview fans of my blog already realised it: There is no new interview this month. The reason is very easy: Unfortunately I had no time to interview a new artist for october. Additionally it begins to be more problematic to find someone "special" who uses 3D Coat and/or has time to be interviewed.

This brought me to the point to overwork my interview concept a bit. I think I will make the interviews more individual - which means: I keep a basic question list, but I will try to point the focus more related to the interview partner and her/his work. So every interview will be a little bit different and more interesting, I hope...

Additionally I think it would be nice to interview more people who are not mandatory using 3D Coat in their daily work. I would be happy if you write me your opinion about this plans.

Enabled "VoxCleanup" command in retopo menu just for experiment - it is tesselation that works like "dynamesh" in zBrush (done many months ago). Probably it is better to remove it from there and place just in export, but Andrew will consider it later.

Fixed problem of painting with big brush near symmetry plane, using material.

Fixed problem of fill tool preview scale, when you are filling with pattern in "UV mapping" mode.

Important impovement to simplify baking process: There is new option in Retopo menu to bake retopo layer only over voxel layer of the same name. There is also a "Check correspondence" button in retopo menu to simplify finding correspondence.

Baking memory consumption decreased a lot.

Holes in LC fixed, but no major update there, please wait until version 3.5.26

Monday, September 26, 2011

LC updated. All tools are still in very beta stage. Some of them may be removed or essentially changed later

Andrew made the possibility to point over materials and masks directly in 3D-Coat - http://bit.ly/oY8ojw

Andrew created a realtime preview for Sketch tool. You will see summary volume immediately while painting. It works without any lag or slowdown. It is still not fully optimized, so painting over the really big images may be slow. It will be resolved very soon.

A smarter edge picking algorithm for retopo room were implemented. If an edge is under surface, it will be picked. But backface edges will not be picked. Simple illustration of the changes - http://bit.ly/o9U17Q

Autopo improved - manual strokes will only partially influence edgeflow - only areas close to stroke bound sphere will be affected. It is important because previously adding even one stroke was discarding all original curvature surface info. So correcting autopo results was really annoying in some cases. Now strokes will have local influence.

Farsthary has published some information about the current status of live Clay. One of the very interesting features is to avoid polygon melting while sculpting. Yes, you are reading right, Polygons are NOT intersecting and melting together while you are sculpting. This is something really new and a great feature for sculpters. With avoiding intersections, there comes some more tools to heal intersections or melt them partially, at any time! So you will be able to switch between melting(intersecting) or nonmelting.

The development of this feature is in an early stage, but already shows the improtant possibilities of this method. Here an example video:

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Today we travel to the eastern europe, not far away of one of the world biggest metropoles: Moscow! My interview partner Pavel Lazovskiy is living in Pravdinskiy, not far from the Russian capital. Some of you may know Pavel under his nickname "Palsan".

But enough words, let's start the interview.

Yours
Chris

The artist

Pavel, how old are you?

I am 32.

Where are you currently living?

Now I live in Russia, city Pravdinskiy, Moscow region

What are you doing, when you switch your PC off? Do you have other hobbies?

It happened that 3D is a job and hobby at once, so I spend a lot of time with PC. Recently I began to devote more time to painting. I am relaxing on the sofa with drawing tablet in the hands and painting new sketches. As well I got involved with photo. It's an incredible thing. So many beauties around us.
I started not long ago and recently have bought my first reflex camera Nikon D3100. As well I like instrumental music and am engaged in kundalini yoga. Yoga is something special. It's not a secret that long work with computer affects health. Yoga helped me with my old sports injuries and maintains my health now. In this mad world it gives a chance to be alone sometimes. I recommend it to all 3D artists and office workers as well. :))

About the work

Pavel, how did you get the idea to be an digital artist, why digital?

I got acquaintance with digital media in 2003. That time I worked for a company selling Italian furniture.
It was a difficult time for me. I dealt with furniture during 5 years and that work annoyed me. I began to think about something new. Once I remembered that I saw “knowledge of 3D MAX” demand in the application form of some company. So I bought a book ”3D MAX 4” and began my first study 4th February 2003 (Even now remember :) ). Then I realized that it will be my future. In a couple years I left my furniture company and began to work with architectural visualization first like freelancer then in a design studio. It took 5 years. And now I like to create characters. It’s cool!! To invent it, to make an image and to give him a temper… It has much more sense for me than just a simple modeling. I am excited to create from scratch for myself though at work I usually use references.

As well I think that a 3D artist should have not only painting talent but some technical eye as well. My mam has artistic talents, she played in a theatre and wrote poetry. But my dad is a technical man. So I have both – humanitarian and technical skills and this helps me a lot.

In general digital media – is excellent! I have possibility for creation anywhere and any time (even now, while my daughter is sleeping in the hotel :) )

Do you have a special aducation in arts?

In my youth years I finished Child Artistic school and later Professional Artistic lyceum. After the military service I graduated from Russian International Tourism Academy. As well I finished 7 different design and animation courses with a study time from a week till 9 months and I have 3D-Coat Certified Instructor status.

Are you employed or do you work freelance?

I worked as a employee in a game and architectural studios and created advertising content and animation. Now I am a freelancer.

Which recent projects were the most important for you?

One of the most important project for me was "Orc". I made it from scratch. There were a lot of mistakes during the process but I understood what I SHOULD NOT do. The more difficult task you create the more professional skills you gain as a result. So now "Orc" is one of my favourite characters.

Which project was a particular challenge for you?

The current project I am involved :) I promised my wife to win the competition :)) That character is a woman in steampunk style. If I will not win I should buy a new dress for my wife :))

Where do you get your ideas from?

I have a see of ideas in my head and they are constantly arriving more and more.. Usually I take them from books, movies and works of different artists . I like a lot historical and fantasy films on HBO channel. As well “Spartak. Blood and sand” and others serials. It’s a fantastic reference supplier.

Are you working with references or is all your work from imagination?

First I start from imagination. Then I collect references, photos, images, movies frames. I like historical authenticity of the character, weapon and clothes.

What are your plans as an artist for the future?

I have some plans for the future development:

1) To improve my knowledge in anatomy of people and animals.

2) To improve eye attractiveness of characters, to make bright and memorable images

3) To perfect my animation knowledge and skills.

Which software are you using for your work, and which hardware?

Usually I have I5 processor, GeForce 570 video card and 8Gb 1333 cash. As well 22” monitor and drawing tablet Wacom Bambo Fun A5. My working soft is Softimage for modeling, Zbrush for sculpting and 3D-Coat for retopo, texturing and UV mapping.

Which tool do you like the most and never want to miss?

I like all Apps above. They manage their correspondent tasks perfectly!

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Copy tool has got rich improvement - respects alpha channel now, makes optional extrusion, may copy just surface - http://t.co/U0acUZY, which means: It may copy just surface if need - super cool to create clothes, stamp logos, shells - http://t.co/gjcmrwL . In general the new version allows you to paint over voxel models with different colors/shaders, of course without blending - http://t.co/WcbU470

Andrew included Import->Import geometry in paint room. In this way you will be able to change geometry/topology in an external editor and preserving layers. Imported geometry may have changed topology but the UV information should be preserved, at least approximately. This works for ppp only.

You are able to replace geometry in the scene, by using AppLinks - http://bit.ly/mZqW11 , AppLinks do not require any modification to support this.

VoxTree->RMB->Extrude will correcty work with freezed areas in surface mode. It is important go get accurate shells, good for dental modeling f.e.

LiveClay works correctly now in stamp modes.

Voxel export with simplification improved again to avoid non-manifolds.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Updated to 3.5.23 [beta!] Win. Mac+Linux as soon as possible, but Andrew need at least brief test from win users (He was testing the last exe, but it's really worth some approvement).

Changes:

All blending modes in paint room are synchronized precisely with Photoshop.

Andrew has made some baking improvements. The following changes were made:
- Baking method is consistent - depends on what you chosen in Retopo->Snap to... Andrew recommend to use "Snap to closest along normal" mode. But in some cases (many overlapped reference poly surfaces) - try to use "Snap to outer surface". Use "Snap to closest along normal" in voxels.
- Baking scan direction will be chosen in smarter way - there was a problem when small and bug polygons were neighbours.
- Snapping will be performed better, especially if you have thin surfaces, points will not be snapped to other side.

Even if there are so many descriptions of PS blending modes no one of them was full and precise, so this sync took a lot of time. Merging new 3B file to the non-empty scene will merge retopo mesh/strokes correctly.

The sunny month august brings us a new featured artist article. This time we travel to Osaka in Japan. Marupura takes us to his fantastic world of asian art. Some typicaly japanese style elements are high visible in some of his works, which are really nice.

Stay creative
Chris

The artist1. How old are you?
33 years old.

2. Where are you currently living?
Live in Osaka in Japan. It is very humid…

What are you doing, when you switch your PC off? Do you have other hobbies?
I don’t know if this is good or bad for me, but making 3DCG is almost my only hobby. However, sometime I play video games (TEKKEN), taking photographs, and taking a small trip with my new car.

About the work

1. How did you get the idea to be an digital artist, why digital?

I liked digital art from since most of it was in 8bit. (What it is called a dot picture)
And, I liked traditional clay sculpting. Therefore, I think that it is natural to start 3D computer-generated art.Above all, if it is digital, the hand won’t get dirty either!

2. Do you have a special aducation in arts?

I studied CG at an art school for two years when I was 20. However, I still think that I want to study a pure art.

3. Are you employed or do you work freelance?I have been employed.

4. Which recent projects were the most important for you?
It is “Yoshimitsu”. The first character I made using 3D-coat. I felt great possibility in 3D-coat, and this experience made my way of making digital art in good way. And above all, there’s nothing more fun than making your beloved character!

5. Which project was a particular challenge for you?

This is what I’m working on right now though, I’m trying to make an character figure kit out of 3D-CG model. I have already made “Yoshimitsu” and it was pretty exciting. It’s worth trying because it needs new and knowledge.

6. Where do you get your ideas from?
Drive on car, on pillow, and on lavatory… It is time when it relaxes in a word :-)
And the photograph becomes a very good idea resource in both technical and art thoughts. The lens, the film, and the composition … All are good for me.

7. Are you working with references or is all your work from imagination?
The work of a sculpting becomes very good reference.
Work of "Takayuki Takeya"http://bit.ly/kFR5So (I started the clay sculpture, influenced by his work.)
ShiflettBros http://www.shiflettbrothers.com/
Simon Lee http://www.bigbluetree.com/
When making an organic thing and imaginable creature, of course, a large amount of animal photographs will be collected.

8. What are your plans as an artist for the future?
3D output first of all. And, Unity Web Player.

9. Which software are you using for your work, and which hardware?
Of course 3D-Coat! And, PhotoshopElement. It is roughly enough by these two software.
I want to master various softwares to make the work, according to occasions.
However, it is easy to be as simple as possible when making it as a hobby.

And, about hardware: I am working all by laptop. (Sony VaioZ) with a small pen-tablet (Wacom
Bamboo). Laptop of Sony is small and very powerful.

10. Which tool do you like the most and never want to miss?
Of course 3D-Coat! The paint mode is indispensable in 3D-Coat. Applying material, and the sculpture can be done at the same time. It might be only 3D-Coat to be able to do it.

The portfolio

1. If you are more interested in Marupuras work, feel free and visit his website:

Marupuras blog: http://marupura.wordpress.com/"It was influenced by the blog of Christoph .( It is the blog at which you are looking right now!)Tips & Tricks of 3D-Coat and my WIPs are recorded though it is written in Japanese."

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

very interesting. Today Andrew announced a very nice improvement of the existing mesh export out of the voxel room.
As you may already know, you can export low-detailed mesh information of your high-poly voxel model. Andrew improved the quality of the exported result. The improvement will be found in one of the next updates.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Here is a tip for people who needs to update UVs of a model, but without loosing already painted information inside 3D Coats paint room.
Where is this needed? Imagine, you are working as a team member and someone else has changed the UVs, after you have already started to paint the textures. Normally a horror scenario for every texture artist, because you have to restart your work or will loose your painting layer information after a eventually needed rebaking process. But not if you are using 3D Coat...

I have written this tip in the 3D Coat forums, because a user asked for it.

To keep your painted textures, while updating to the new UVs, do the following:
1. Export the model with the updated UVs to a obj file.
2. Now move to 3DCoat and open your old working scene, if not already done.
3. Go to the "Textures" menu inside the paint room und use "Import UV".
4. Use the new obj file as the source for the new UV information. Change the uv smoothing if needed, when you will be asked for in the assistant window.
-> Your old uvs will now be replaced. That's it!

Important: This works with identical models only- the vertex positions have to be at the exactly same place.

The big advantages of this method:
- No rebaking process needed!
- No paint layers get lost! (This is currently unique in the texture application market as I know)

Friday, July 8, 2011

it is a little bit quite around me, currently. I've started a new appointment at the beginning of this month. The contract force me to work at the clients office for the rest of the year, but once a week I am working at my homeoffice. At this day I will try to update all my internet activities. But before this, I have to finish a few old appointments and that takes all my freetime.

As soon as I have more time, I will publish new videos and infos about 3D Coat and more.

Nevertheless I am preparing a new featured artist interview for August.

Friday, July 1, 2011

the summer has begun, in the northern part of the earth and so in europe, too. As always at the start of a new month, I am proud to present a new featured artist for you. This time it is my buddy, Daniel Lieske. Daniel is not a blank sheet in the international digital graphics community, he is a very talented illustrator and his imagination entertain us with beautiful artworks.

Enjoy the interview!
Yours Chris

The artist

1. How old are you?

I'm 33.

2. Where are you currently living?

I'm living in a small German town called Warendorf.

3. What are you doing, when you switch your PC off? Do you
have other hobbies?

Not really. When I leave the PC I'm normally either eating or sleeping. At the weekends I normally enjoy some free time with the family.

About the work
1. How did you get the idea to be an digital artist, why
digital?

Digital just happens to be the most recent technology to do art and to present it to a wide audience over the internet. As an artist I just use the tools that exist. If we would still all paint in oil that would be what I would do, too.

2. Do you have a special education in arts?

Not really. I picked up a lot at work but the most things I taught myself. I like to analyse things and get behind their workings. Digital art is a great field to do just that. There's a lot to explore and new stuff is constantly emerging.

3. Are you employed or do you work freelance?

I currently concentrate on my own projects which means that I'm mainly working as an author. I do some freelance work on the side though.

4. Which recent projects were the most important for you?

That definitely has to be the Wormworld Saga Digital Graphic Novel which I'm currently working on and which will keep me busy for a long time.

5. Which project was a real challenge?

The graphic novel is a huge challenge on multiple levels. There obviously is the creative and technical challenge to create a compelling story and visuals but there's also the business side of things where I constantly learn and improve.

6. Where do you get your ideas from?

I think that ideas come from things that one has seen before. So I guess my ideas come from everything I have ever seen in my live. I see patterns, I recombine and try to make sense of this world somehow. My solutions can then be seen in my artwork.

7. Are you working with references or is all your work from imagination?

If there is a connection between my work and the real world,I normally like to look at the real thing first and study it. I think art has a lot to to with understanding the complexities of life and our imagination is hardly able to come up with these on its own.

8. What are your plans as an artist for the future?

I hope to be able to work as an author for a long time. I will need some 15 years to tell the Wormworld Saga. I don't really think about what will come after that just yet.

9. Which software are you using for your work, and which hardware?

I do most of my work in Photoshop CS5 with a WACOM Intuos4 tablet. I work on a PC.

10. Which software or tool do you like the most and never want to miss?

I love the new natural media brushes of Photoshop CS5 in combination with the WACOM Art Pen. I waited a long time for such a versatile digital brush and I really don't want to miss it.

The portfolio
1. If you have a personal website, please give us the weblink.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Great news!
Farstshary presents on his website the new function "radial symmetry" for one of the upcoming versions of 3D Coat. This function is something a lot of people are waiting for already a long time!

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

This time my "virtual travel" leads me to the beautiful Italy, rather the north of Italy. We go to the famous Lake Garda. There you will meet Francesco Mai, a talented cg artist, who is not going the traditional way of creating cg - Francescos main focus is on creating real art by using todays computer graphic techniques.

Have fun with my article
Chris

The artist1. How old are you?
First of all thank you very much for the precious opportunity you give me with this interview on your 3D Coat blog. But come to your question... How old am I? 38 years of analogy life and 23 of digital one.

2. Where are you currently living?
I am from Italy, and now live on the lake of Garda in a town called... Garda. But I lived many years in Milan and spend some years also in Parma and in Pugli.

3. What are you doing, when you switch your PC off? Do you have other hobbies?
Usually I read magazines such as National Geographic and Science. I really love watch documentary about quantistic physique, dinosaurs, ancient geological eras and savage animals. I am also a photographer. I am very attracted to shoot in local markets (not the tourist one!) of country like Madagascar, Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Egypt and so on... I also like to listen "strange"music. I mean non-commercial music, from classical to heavy metal.

About the work1. How did you get the idea to be an digital artist, why digital?
I think the my first idea to pursue the digital world briought me in mind the 23 years ago I was playing
with the PhotoCD format(does anyone rember it?). I was fascinated to the idea tha a lots of phots in very different size could be guested in a thin CD. As I tell you before I was born as classical analogic photographer first.
After some years I felt in love with one of the first "sculpting"software, called "Sculpt 3D". That was my first step in the world of 3D world. I remember with pleasure also Imagine. The first serious software for me was Lightwave 3D V 5.0. Many years was gone and now here we are with fast 4 and 6 cores cpu, faster GPU, tons of gigas and now also with 3D Coat. Incredible what is possible to create in voxel sculpting. Totally creative freedom!
I chose digital art because maybe my brain is to fast to have the capacity to wait for the natural process of analogic art. I love artistic experiments and computer is the best medium to do in my opinion. The future of art will be illuminated by computers. There will come the day that there will no distinction between Art and digital Art...

2. Do you have a special education in arts?
No, I studied Biology at University. Anyway my father is a painter and in his late part of life, also a sculptor. Now it's my time but with mouse and tablet instead of brush and chisel...

3. Are you employed or do you work freelance?
I am an independent digital artist.

4. Which recent projects were the most important for you?
Surely the exhibition in Bogotà (Colombia) the last March with the prestigious Istituto di Cultura Italiana all'estero. Also the very last exhibition in Italy, in Gorizia was in collaboration with another important institutions, the Ministero dei Beni Culturali.

5. Which project was a particular challenge for you?
Try to extract something of artist stuff from 3D Coat and Zbrush (opps can I nominate it here?:) )(Note by Chris: "Yes you can!". My blog is focused on 3D Coat in first case, but actually completely free and independent of any third party interests.)

6. Where do you get your ideas from?
From animal and plant's structure, especially from marine wildlife. I am very attracted also from macro-photograpy and images caught with electronic microscopy.

8. What are your plans as an artist for the future?
To have an important exhibition with also 3D print of my "virtual"sculptures. Now the market is almost ready to create real sculptures from the digital ones. No matter the material... And this process it is enchanting for me. Also some professional and artistic animation of the same objects are wished, just to demonstrate to the public the versatility of the digital art. Of course on a 62 inches Full HD TVs.

9. Which software are you using for your work, and which hardware?
I use modo for modelling, (previously only Lightwave 3D), Cinema 4D for rendering, then I am "playing"with zBrush and of course with 3D Coat. Ahh - I forgot Photoshop!
I use a Windows based pc with 8 gigas of RAM, 3,6 ghz quad core Xeon, Apple Cinema HD monitor 23 inches, Nvidia GeForce GTX 260...

10. Which tool do you like the most and never want to miss?

The "sphere tool" inside 3D Coat, which is found in the voxel room, irreplaceable for create the main shape in 3D Coat... but not only for this...

The portfolio
If you are more interested in Francescos work, feel free and visit his website:www.francescomai.com

Monday, May 30, 2011

Ryan Schmidt published a free modeling and remeshing tool called meshmixer. It is completely free and ready to download on his official website.

meshmixer shows us the future in organic modeling techniques, but it works already today! You must see the videos, the possibilities are andless! Meshmixer is much more than a clean up tool for scanned 3D models. I am very curious in the future development.

I would be not surprised, when we see Ryan soon in a company like pixologic or similar... but I hope it will need some time until they "catch him". ;-)

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Nicolas Garilhe inspire us with his latest work for the last Dominance War.
To get detailed information about his newest creation "The god of writings" and enjoy more example images, just visit his thread in the 3D Coat forums.

I am back from my vacation. Actually already since monday, but on tuesday morning my pc suddenly broke... Not a good start, so I had to wait for the repair up till today. But all is working now and no data got lost. Great!

Following you see two of my photos, I made at the isle called Borkum, where my wife and me spend the vacation time.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

this month I present you an artist from germany: Steffen Unger. Steffen is already well known in the graphics market and offers his talent to different companies in germany and international. Steffens main skills are sculpting and texturing characters, but he is well experienced in all kind of computer graphics for entertainment projects, too.

Have fun with the interview
Chris

The artistHow old are you?
29 since a few days.

Where are you currently living?
In Berlin/Germany.

What are you doing, when you switch your PC off? Do you have other hobbies?
Oh those are pretty rare occasions, as mostly I'm pretty busy, however I try to travel at least twice a year, mostly inside europe as it doesn't take as much time flying around. But when I'm here and have freetime, the usual stuff, going to the cinemas, meeting with friends, going to a restaurant, from time to time going into clubs, or museums, I guess what a lot of other people also do in their freetime, I don't think I'm that much different in this matter.

About the workHow did you get the idea to be an digital artist, why digital?
Well I kinda slipped into it, I did it in my freetime when I was at school, met a cool guy (www.hannohagedorn.com) who was at that time art intern in a gamecompany, I started testing their game. After finishing school I entered that company as an intern, later did my apprenticeship there and quite some time later, while Hanno went off for bigger things I stayed at that place for the production, became leadartist - and well became over the years the person I am now.

Do you have a special education in arts?
As said I did my apprenticeship in that company as a media designer, but it has nothing to do with arts or my job at all, it was more or less something to get my parents off my back, to have something "safe" in my pocket, to rely on when this game thingie doesn't work out.

Are you employed or do you work freelance?
Since the company closed in 2007 I am doing freelance work, I kinda like beeing free and not having to work on the same project for 5 years, instead switching every few months and have more variety in productions.
But for the right company and project I sure would go back into a studio as well, I love beeing around other artists, from time to time I work at clients offices but its not the same thing as working on a project from beginning to end.

Which recent projects were the most important for you?
Airborn, my - or our - own brand, me and some friends worked on for quite some time now -we changed it a lot recently but it is still fun to work on. If we have the time to do so, its a bit annoying to work on something in your freetime, it happens that I or others just lost the drive for a while, and therefore it takes quite some time to get anything done.

Which project was a particular challenge for you?
I think it was the last Settlers project for Ubisoft, trying to get as close to the very stylized conceptart as possible or enhancing it. I didn't succeed on all characters, but I proud of quite a lot of them, was a fun and challenging project.

Where do you get your ideas from?
Everywhere I guess, other artists, movies, my surrounding, knowing a lot of artists around me it kinda helps me staying focussed and trying out new things.

Are you creating realistic artworks too or mainly abstract?
What is abstract and what is realistic? I'm sure no modern artist doing highly abstract works, I'm still playing more in the figurative field than anything else, but mostly in a more stylized manner. While I like doing more realistic stuff as well, I rarely get the chance to work on those.

What are your plans as an artist for the future?
Finishing the first episode of Airborn would be cool thing to achieve.

Which software are you using for your work, and which hardware?
My main app is 3dsmax, but I use a lot of other tools alongside it, zbrush for sculpting, form development and detailling etc. Xnormal for Texturebaking, 3dcoat mostly for retopo and Photoshop alongside Deeppaint and Crazybump to do textures.

Which tool do you like the most and never want to miss?
Really hard to say, I like portions of most tools I use a lot while there are things I totally dislike, in really all of them. I think it is the mix that makes me do my work in an effective way.

The portfolio
If you are more interested in Steffens work, feel free and visit his website:www.steffenunger.com

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

in my new quick tutorial video I will show you how to change the camera zoom speed of 3D Coats viewport camera.
This is important, when you are working on tiny details of your models. The fast default zoom speed can disturb the workflow sometimes.

Andrew made an additional checkbox "CUDA smooth boost" that will enable 3X strength of smoothing if CUDA is enabled.

You are able to assign hotkeys to any button in the 'E' panel now.

Andrew tuned the Surface Fill tool to make it better.

Andrew implemented a new brush based on surface clay that acts close to Build in voxel room and "wax", known in Mudbox. The n ew tool is a small modification of clay, but it seems to be cool for building up basic shapes. Andrew called it "Buildup".

Andrew improved merge surface->voxels algorithm to produce much less artifacts like that - http://bit.ly/i4rmT6 . They were usually appearing after the surface was smoothed in voxels a lot and then the move function was applied (as well as any surface change). It is hard to avoid them at all, but they will appear rarely now. To remove this kind of artefacts at all use the depth shader or the function "To global space". Those artefacts are not actually surface distortions but rather normals calculation problems. It happens due to voxel surface thickness variation. Smooth makes the surface thicker, this is why this problem appears.

Friday, April 1, 2011

this month I am proud to present you my interview with Nicolas Garilhe, a french artist, who is currently living in Canada and working for the game industry. Nicolas impress us with very nice character artworks.

Have fun with the article
Chris

The artistHow old are you?
I'm 25 years old.

Where are you currently living?
I'm from France, but I'm currently living in Montreal, Canada.

What are you doing, when you switch your PC off? Do you have other hobbies?
When the PC is off, which is not often, I like to enjoy a movie in theater, a good restaurant with my girlfriend, or simply chill in a café with my friends. Oh ! And video games of course ;)

About the workHow did you get the idea to be an digital artist, why digital?
Actually, from the very beginning, I wanted to do games. At first I thought to be programmer, so I started to learn by myself the basics, and try to create my own video games. I quickly needed some graphics, and that's how I try for the first time digital art. I really enjoyed it and since then I try to learn by myself 3D modeling. My path is quite atypical cause I started with digital art, and then try traditional one when I felt the need to improve my poor drawing skill.

Do you have a special education in arts?
Again, my education was atypical since I had a diploma in physics. It was mostly to please mom and dad, who weren't really sure video game was a good path, and I can understand them. The industry is relatively young, and it's hard to land a job. But after this, since I was still highly motivated, I finally found a school in Montreal, Canada at the Campus Ubisoft, which was great for me since Montreal is a great place of opportunity in the video game industry.

Are you employed or do you work freelance?
Currently, I'm working at Gameloft Montreal, as a character artist for 1 year now.

Which recent projects were the most important for you?
I love to enter on line 3D contest. It helps a lot for your personal training, for several reasons. One of those is because it impose you a deadline. You have to create a polished piece before this deadline. I'm the kind of guys who can spend months on a piece, so it's really helpful. But probably the best reason is because you compete with other artists, who share with you their tricks and tips and are pleased to help you.

The last contest I entered was the comiccon challenge 2010 on gameartisans.org. I learnt so much from great artists, and some pieces were truly inspiring.

Which project was a particular challenge for you?
I was recently asked at work, to make the main character of the game I'm currently working on. It was the first time for me so it was a big responsibility but a great opportunity. You really need to put all you go into it because the character will be seen from all angles and during hours. But I can't wait to see people playing with my character, it gonna be a crazy feeling !

Where do you get your ideas from?
Tough question, and I don't think I got a clear answer. All I can say is it can come from everywhere. A movie, a game, a book of history, a discussion … A great way to get inspired is to browse as much as you can picture database like deviantart.com or cghub.com. I try to do it daily.

Are you creating realistic artworks too or mainly abstract?
Actually I never tried to create abstract, I tend to make semi realistic, mostly because realistic artworks is really hard to achieve and I don't think I've got the skill yet to it

What are your plans as an artist for the future?
My ambitions for now is to keep training myself, to be able one day working on AAA games,

Which software are you using for your work, and which hardware?
I principally use 3DSMax, Zbrush, Photoshop and 3DCoat for personal work. I work on a PC platform, with an Intel i5 processor, a Nvidia GTX460 cg card with 16gb of memory.

Which tool do you like the most and never want to miss?
To be absolutely honest, I would have to say Zbrush, but mostly because I work with it for several years now. But the more I play with 3DCoat, the more I'm amazed with this software, and now it's definitely part of my workflow.

The portfolio
If you are more interested in Nicolas work, feel free and visit his website:www.nicolasgarilhe.com

About Me

I am a freelance Art Director and CG Artist, located
in germany. I am always interested in enquiries for international
video game and film industries.

Beside my existing experience I am
always open for new challenges and software.
Because of working sometimes as Art Director and Projekt Manager for
graphic related jobs, I have good experience in production related tools.

My main interests are working in teams, coordinating cg artists and
planning graphic assets for projects. Of course I still create graphic content by myself too, all this since 1991.

Furthermore I am an
official tutor for the 3D software 3D Coat, which was translated by me into german too.
My native language is german, but I speak english, too. My english is
not business fluent, but good enough to not to get lost in the world and create some tutorials.